Sabah is in the Northern part of Borneo. It is bordered by Sarawak on its southwestern side and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to the south. Sabah has a coastline of approximately 800 to 900 miles and with the South China Sea in the west and north, the Sulu Sea in the northeast and the Celebes Sea in the east. Sabah's total land area is 76,115 sq km (29,388 sq miles). Sabah's population is about 2.5 million. It is 1,961 km from Hong Kong, 1,143 km from Manila, 1,495 km from Singapore, 1,678 km from Kuala Lumpur and 2,291 km from Taipei - note that it is nearer to Manila than Malaysia's capital of Kuala Lumpur.

North Borneo is much undeveloped and very rich in natural resources. One of the wealthiest oil producing countries is located in same island of Borneo, the tiny Sultanate of Brunei.

The Sultanate of Sulu was a Muslim state that ruled over many of the islands of the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines. The sultanate was founded in 1457; but other sources place the date earlier. Muslim historians believed that it had existed centuries earlier in the time of Raja Baguinda Ali. The sultanate, together with the Sultanate of Maguindanao, bitterly fought the Spanish Empire and preserved her sovereignty. The Spanish Empire rule was limited in Luzon and Visayas. It was the Americans who succeeded in annexing the Sultanate with the rest of the Philippines through manipulation and betrayal of an agreement to the contrary as stipulated in the Kiram-Bates Treaty. The Philippines was later annexed by the United States in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War. Only North Borneo went to the British and later became part of Malaysia as Sabah in 1963.

At its peak, it stretched over the islands that bordered the western peninsula of Mindanao in the east, to the modern Malaysian state of Sabah (formerly North Borneo) in the west and south, and to Palawan in the north.

Currently, the issue of who would be the legitimate Sultan of Sulu is disputed by several branches of the Royal Family; although the line of succession fell on the Kiram branch of the royal family from 1823 up to the death of the last sovereign sultan in 1936.

During the 1450s, Shari'ful Hashem Syed Abu Bakr, an Arab born in Johore, arrived in Sulu from Malacca. In 1457, he founded the Sultanate of Sulu; he then renamed himself "Paduka Maulana Mahasari Sharif Sultan Hashem Abu Bakr". "Paduka" is a local term for "Master"; "Mahasari", for "His Majesty".

In 1658 (other sources say 1703), the Sultanate of Sulu received North Borneo from the Sultan of Brunei after Sulu sent aid against rebellion in Brunei. In the same year, Sulu gave Palawan to Qudarat, Sultan of Maguindanao, who married a Sulu princess and formed an alliance with Sulu. Sultan Qudarat eventually ceded Palawan to the Spanish Empire in 1705. From then on, the Sultanate of Sulu is referred to as the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo.